FEDERAL JUDGE FREEZES TRUMP’S CASE VS BALLOT DROP BOXES

A federal judge on Sunday ordered a stay in President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign’s lawsuit seeking to ban drop boxes and other changes to Pennsylvania’s mail-balloting procedures, Jarrett Renshaw wrote for Reuters on August 24, 2020.

The Republican president has repeatedly and without evidence said that an increase in mail-in ballots would lead to a surge in fraud, although Americans have long voted by mail, including Trump himself.

There is perhaps no more consequential lawsuit than the one in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016 and is considered essential to his re-election effort. The Trump campaign submitted a 524-page document to the court that consisted of press releases and news stories from the Republicans complaining about voting fraud but not a single case of proof about its commission in Pennsylvania.

J. Nicholas Ranjan, U.S district judge for western Pennsylvania, said the federal case brought by the Trump campaign would not move forward until similar lawsuits in state courts are completed or unless they are delayed. “The Court will apply the brakes to this lawsuit, and allow the Pennsylvania state courts to weigh in and interpret the state statutes that undergird Plaintiffs’ federal-constitutional claims,” Ranjan said. The Trump campaign says the ballot drop box invites fraud. The federal judge asked the campaign to provide evidence of actual fraud, but the campaign declined, arguing it did not have to do so in order to win the case.